In the news this week: Snapchat's popularity soars and they've introduced yet another update. Plus Twitter, Facebook and Instagram all have new releases.

In the news this week: Snapchat’s popularity is soaring and they’ve introduced yet another update to the app. Twitter is jumping on the how-to food video bandwagon, Instagram is surfacing interesting video content and Facebook releases monthly ‘what to watch’ trend infographics, enjoy!

Snapchat down with the kids

According to a study conducted by consumer insights project, Taking Stock With Teens, Snapchat is now regarded as the most important social media network among teens. Last year Snapchat came fourth, polling behind table-topping Instagram as well as Facebook and Twitter. However this year 28% of the 6,500 surveyed teens voted Snapchat as the most important social network leaving the other aforementioned networks trailing in its wake.

What does this mean?

Well, Snapchat has done extremely well to grow it’s user base, especially considering the investment from competitors pushing messaging apps such as Messenger and Whatsapp. Snapchat’s recent launch of Chat 2.0, which includes video calls and messaging, takes it another step towards becoming the complete social network. Impressive!

Twitter releases How-to food videos

What’s better than making food? A video about making food, apparently. The internet has been swamped with them of late. Some of the most popular videos are made by Tasty, a food channel that is owned by Buzzfeed and features heavily on Facebook. Now it seems Twitter are trying to get in on the culinary action.

Last week a heavily Twitter-branded food video that was filmed at the Australian Twitter HQ and featured Australian celebrity chef Adam Liaw was tweeted from Liaw’s account and re-tweeted by @TwitterFood and @TwitterAU. If this becomes a regular item on Twitter then it will give other food content producers some stiff competition.

Instagram introduces video to explore

Last week Instagram provided users with an improved way to search and view video content. This improvement has come in the form of a “videos you might like” section which is situated in Instagram’s explore tab. According to Instagram’s official blog this:

collects videos from across Instagram’s global community into a seamless viewing experience. And as you scroll through the Explore grid, you may also see “Featured” channels filled with videos on specific topics.

This update ties in with Instagram’s careful integration of algorithmic driven feeds in order to deliver content deemed most desirable to users – never a popular thing to do! Hopefully this update will be more welcome by the Instagram community.

Facebook IQ releases New Topics to Watch infographics

Facebook has started releasing monthly “topics to watch” infographics with the intention of bringing trending and emerging topics to our attention. Each release will, as posted on Facebook IQ’s page: “highlight six topics that have experienced overall growth over the past year”.

For March 2016, the six trending topics according to Facebook were: Buddha’s hand, Cortado, educational entertainment, Kalamkari, videotelephony and Wuxia. Now you wouldn’t be blamed for thinking that this is a little bizarre, but as industry blog, Social Media Today, points out “that’s kind of point”.

Facebook is using its data to unearth the topics which they believe have a greater chance of creating more conversations. Although this all seems a little bemusing at present, theses topics are trending – and there’s value in knowing that. Keeping track of these monthly releases may just prove helpful in identifying the next big trend.

Snapchat augments reality with 3D stickers

Snapchat has introduced yet another update. The busy social network has now made it possible to pin 3D stickers to moving objects within a video. This now makes it possible to make, for example, your pet a subject of amusement by pinning an emoji to it’s head as it obliviously walks on by (see above).

This update will go hand-in-hand with the filter effects which are already available. Snapchat’s updates are arriving thick and fast as they do their best to leave Facebook’s less known copycat version, MSQRD (Masquerade) trailing in their dust.

In this article

Having graduated from Lincoln University with a BA, Mark joined Our Social Times as Marketing Assistant in the summer of 2015. A keen social networker, he writes about the latest developments in social media marketing.